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Dancelight

My very first girlfriend studied ethnic dance at UCLA, amongst other things. She was born in Taiwan, but raised in Southern California. Although we were only an item for about a year and a half, she had a tremendous impact on my life in general.

I owe her a lot, actually, for she inspired me to better myself in multiple ways—Everything from the way I talked and carried myself to the way I perceived the world and my place within it. If we never met, I’m sure that I would still be an irrepressible, delinquent teenager, or worse. She was a catalyst for self-improvement, so it seemed fitting to dedicate a ghazal to her even though many years have passed and we have both long since moved on.

Dancelight

For Wennifer

Though countless twirling wonders dance before to bait my heart,
Her dance splits night asunder—brilliance holds elate my heart.

When first her dark eyes opened, all the bashful heavens blushed;
The full moon danced out singing, “Let her gaze gyrate my heart!”

I saw her lightly dancing midst a grove of cherry trees,
Their blossoms rained upon her; scenes as such translate my heart.

A weeping porcelain rose cried, “Once with dancing step she passed;
She picked me up and kissed me; now what love can sate my heart?”

Her midnight jasmine fragrance dances playful on the wind,
And drifts across the rooftops on to stimulate my heart.

She walked down by the ocean where the waves danced at her feet,
The sea said, “Though I fall back, this does not abate my heart.”

One day I heard Zahhar say, “I did not know how to dance,
And though she tried to teach me, I could not locate my heart.”

This is my 111th ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003

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Release

Understanding comes without invitation and knocks at the door, and yet she’ll often elude a lifetime of the most sedulous efforts to find her. She is a mystery deeper than the Marinas Trench, darker than the void between galaxies. One can only put himself in the path of experience and knowledge, then hope for the best.

Release

When letting go of vain understanding,
One begins to attain understanding.

In the desert, a sea of sand stretches;
Wind bestows to each grain understanding.

If one will not wake from shifting dreams,
What good is it to gain understanding?

A rolling ocean of flourishing pines
Rose from earth to sustain understanding.

When one holds a whisk or a staff upright,
Speaking will only stain understanding.

When lightning flashes across a dry night,
The sky is soon to rain understanding.

What hinders the mind will hinder all else;
Why struggle to retain understanding?

Rivers can swell till, flooding, they burst
Banks not meant to contain understanding.

All seekers find the way in due time,
And then release inane understanding.

Gray grasses bend in myriad patterns;
They yield rather than strain, understanding.

The traveler on the road to heaven
Is filled with an arcane understanding.

The rosebud opens itself to the sky,
Not wanting to restrain understanding.

Be still, Zahhar, there is peace in the wind;
Never prize nor disdain understanding.

This is my 97th ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003

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Fettered

This one came out of nowhere. But, then, if you think about it, so did we. I mean, just where were we before “this” happened? Where were we before we were somehow caught and trapped by the dreamcatcher web of forming veins and arteries? This ghazal asks a lot of questions. In fact, each sher is its own question, and each question probably doesn’t have an answer—Certainly not an easy one.

Fettered

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 87th ghazal.

Publication History:

Candelabrum Poetry Magazine — Spring 2003

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Tillage

The title, though archaic, should hint at some of the meanings within the sher of this ghazal. Crops cannot be planted in untilled soil, for instance. This word has also been used in the past to denote the fruits of a cultured mind or spirit. Because there is no need for the sher of a ghazal to have continuity, a lot can be done to reflect back to a title such as this.

Tillage

Your words—They drift like drizzle down to bead me;
I stumble through the vacant ways you lead me.

Each night, beneath the shifting gaze of your eye,
I listen for the silent words you feed me.

How can my clay begin to learn its aspect
If your caress will never cease to knead me?

I am for you to harrow or abandon;
Just know my heart longs for your grace to weed me.

I never learned to fence with words like foils,
And so I feared that their misuse would bleed me.

A lone rose sways on arid desert breezes;
Each day it asks the sky, “why did you seed me?”

“Why torment me,” one day I asked, “with your song?”
“Zahhar”, I heard, “deep in your heart you heed me.”

This is my 78th ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003

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Emanation

It seems to me that “memory” is a very natural radif for the ghazal form. It is something that emanates like light from the unconscious. It is abstract and indefinite, mysterious even.

Emanation

I am that visitor in your faded memory;
We’re threaded as ancient friends in braided memory.

Once, we strolled in talk on emerald hills;
They dried in drought, and have rarely bladed memory.

Together we work to weave this spanning tapestry;
Once more our gilded threads have aided memory.

Monuments of stone bear witness to ages past,
But only your words shine light on shaded memory.

To gain its home, a dove flies tossed in storm,
Its way home deeply locked in jaded memory.

My heart was crushed with anguish, but now you have come
To lift, with a longer past, my laded memory.

Zahhar is again a shuttle in the loom of time,
Yet not the weaver of his graded memory.

This is my 75th ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003

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Dilution

This attempts to metaphorize a friend’s passing. She died in July of 2002 from colon cancer. She often told me that I was the only one who would listen to her when she wanted to talk about her fear of dying. We would talk as lightheartedly about this taboo subject as if we were talking about poetry itself. This had apparently played an important role in helping her prepare emotionally and mentally for the inevitable. She was a good friend and I still miss her.

Dilution

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 73rd ghazal.

Publication History:

Art Arena (web-based) — June 2005

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Evanescence

I met her because I took an interest in her daughter. She befriended me because she felt I was unique. I cultivated the friendship because no-one like her had ever bothered with me before. She died because the cancer finally won. For me, the loss was staggering. This ghazal was written shortly after her death.

Evanescence

In memory of Yvonne Sligh

In the place where I pay homage to the night
I pled your case to stars that strew the night.

From this mountaintop I prayed for you to heal,
In tandem fell two bold stars through the night.

I, too, had walked on that shadow’s edge before
And knew you as another who knew the night.

Your journey along the shadow’s edge was long,
Then your strength gave out and on you drew the night.

Maybe your soul was healed instead of your form
That we are left in your wake to rue the night.

Now in silence on that mountaintop I gaze
On blurring stars where long I view the night.

Stars reflect in the well-spring of my soul;
I sought a friend, but was left in lieu the night.

Was it your essence in the wind that whispered,
“I’m not lost, Zahhar,” as languid grew the night?

This is my 70th ghazal.

Publication History:

The Ghazal Page (web-based) — August 2003

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Acorn

I have for years had a relationship with the spirit of the oak. Specifically the California Black Oak, but by extension all oaks. I don’t think of this relationship in the totemic sense of power animals and spirit guides, but in the animistic sense of a mutual connection.

Such connections can be guiding, and they can also be protective—but to my feeling, this is the decision of the spirits that I’ve connected with, not myself. This is one of the big differences between totemism and animism. The totemist seeks to control his or her spiritual relationships and force their wills. This, like any relationship where one member attempts to manipulate and control another, tends to sour and end badly. The animist seeks only to acknowledge and cultivate those spiritual relationships that sustain a mutual benefit. This benefit can be emotional, mental, psychic, influential, and other. I’m sure the spectrum of mutual benefit is as varied as the spectrum of light itself, and that much of it is beyond the grasp of both participants. For it to remain healthy and unspoiled, it must be cultivated and not controlled.

In this poem, Zahhar (the pen name my screen name here is based upon) receives a gift, a blessing, an unknown—a seed. A treasure. It need not be interpreted or understood, only felt and acknowledged. Such is the nature of those gifts—blessings—offered by our spirit companions. The minute you try to make sense of them, they’ll wither and die, and sometimes even transmogrify into a curse.

Acorn

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

This is my 63rd ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003

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Blasphemy

War is itself a form of blasphemy, and yet wars are waged over blasphemies perceived. Strange, isn’t it? Somehow I doubt that any fundamentalist really grasps whatever “truth” there is to be found within their dogma or sees the ridiculous irony in attempting to force those around them into adhering to their convictions.

Blasphemy

Bold, near-sighted fools bray, “Sacrilege!”;
and yet, is not their own way sacrilege?

Fortress prisons seal the heart from love
‘till light itself becomes gray sacrilege.

When men in high position lose their faith,
they then make of their faith a sacrilege.

How can we feathers grow to soar in flight
when we must deem our own clay sacrilege?

The judging stones that crush a hidden face
create within their own fray sacrilege.

If there is One that language can’t define,
then how does but a word say sacrilege?

Around the world brave guns and sabers flash.
But think! How does their rage slay sacrilege?

Both doves and ravens dance upon the winds;
who calls the way that these pray sacrilege?

And you Zahhar are not above the rest;
dare not believe that men stay sacrilege.

This is my 56th ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003

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Sleep

The subject of death came to plague my thoughts at a very early age, probably around four or five. And so I spent the greater part of my childhood in livid terror of death. The fault could be my father’s, but there’s no real telling. It’s possible this fear rode a thread of spirit into my manifest being from some place, time, or realm before.

I vaguely recall asking my father what happens after we die, probably as a five year old, and he proceeded to explain to me with all the concrete believability that only one’s hallowed father could possess, that it all just ends, that it’s like going to sleep and never waking up again. He was an atheist. For some reason this thought terrified me more, at the time, than the worst possible hells the Catholics could think up for my young brain.

Yet, as an adult… Where does time go when we sleep, between the dreams. It seems to me that there truly is an aspect of our being that is beyond the touch of time, and that we only realize it, unconsciously, in the depths of sleep.

It was as I pondered such thoughts when I sat down to write this ghazal.

Sleep

Who can remember their race between dreams?
Nothing ever holds its pace between dreams.

A mighty river thunders on its way,
An endless quest for the place between dreams.

Though predators fiercely hunt for your soul,
Know they can never give chase between dreams.

Cloudscapes of splendor vanish in the wind;
Their existence bears no trace between dreams.

This depthless farness mid the burning stars
Is but the motionless space between dreams.

Light ventures through and beyond the abyss,
Yet will never show its face between dreams.

Our pains and sorrows gather fold on fold,
But who can carry their case between dreams?

Your freedom flutters far in flight, Zahhar,
For limitless is the grace between dreams.

This is my 45th ghazal.

Publication History:

The Ghazal Page (web-based) — June 2002

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Living Waters

This is inspired by the ocean, the powerful living waters of the earth. I suppose there isn’t much more to say about it.

Living Waters

The voice of nature sings on crashing waves,
Full might of her heart expressed in dashing waves.

Despite their all encompassing thunderous din,
What brilliant peace is wrought by clashing waves!

Nature’s essence foams on roaring waters;
Her spirit flows in sanative plashing waves.

Unparalleled in all the spanning lands,
Unbridled beauty leaps on flashing waves.

Bound in dance with the ageless circling moon,
In tandem rise and fall the smashing waves.

What, of all viable forces, can move the soul
More than the power and grace of pashing waves?

Carved throughout the pass of coursing ages,
Endless the shores are shaped by lashing waves.

Often alone Zahhar stands watching in awe
The awful wonder and life in thrashing waves.

This is my 21st ghazal.

Publication History:

LYNX (web-based) — October 2002